Points in Time
by tosca
Summary: A two-parter about what happens after you've fought the future and won... Krycek/Skinner pairing.
1. Peripetia Alex's POV

### peripetia

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**peripetia** n. a turning point, reversal of fortune.

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The wooden door was a blank indifferent barrier. He wished his mind were the same.

* * *

Turning points.

The first had been no blinding moment of clarity, no hallowed unveiling of The Truth. Just the build-up of occasional pricks from the burr of suspicion, and the queasy seasickness of something not quite right. Easy to ignore. Up until the point there was a constantly nagging little murmur in his head sounding remarkably like his Great Aunt Nina - not a very comforting thought in itself, channeling crazy dead relatives as your conscience. Added to a heaviness in his throat and chest that felt like dread and wasn't going away, no matter how much cough syrup or vodka he drank. Then the little voice wasn't so little anymore and it was screaming at him he'd fucked up, he'd made the wrong choices and he wasn't escaping with just a tanned behind or a reprimand this time.

Then everything really did go to shit.

He'd been running around like a rat in a trap, doing what he thought was wrong because it was supposed to be right, he'd been told it was right. He'd been a fool. They'd got what they wanted, and he'd gotten duped.

Mountains. Cable cars. Cigarette butts.

Now no longer the green-eyed boy, just another hired thug. Clinging to some of his still-floating ideals and illusions amongst the flotsam of his shipwrecked life. Trying to prove he was worth something, something other than a quick gun hand and a pretty face. Trying to salvage anything out of this mess - some recognition, or honour, or control. Failing miserably.

That was the first turning point. Resentment.

Resentment less for fact they were morally as sound as the Titanic, than that they'd screwed him over. That he was the supplicant, expected to be grateful they'd taken him in, when they were the ones who'd fucked up his career and his life and his lover so bad he couldn't go back.

Resentment smouldered like a hot little coal. He followed their orders, carried out their bidding, did his best to fit into this new organisation and work his way up the hierarchy. But he wasn't blind enough to be a foot soldier, and wasn't informed enough to be a conspirator.

Then the little blinking red figures on a car dashboard led to that blinding moment of clarity; the understanding his machinations were all for nothing. He wasn't indispensable, wasn't even desired. The Consortium had no use for him - not his intelligence, his skills, or any of his other assets. They wanted him dead.

That was the second turning point. Self-preservation.

But no matter how far and hard and fast he ran his present couldn't outrun his past. An angry fist in his gut, an alien oilslick in his head.

Third turning point. Defiance.

Kneeling on the floor of a pitch-black missile silo in the middle of godforsaken South Dakota coughing his guts up to the realisation there were worse things in this life than death or loneliness or pain; things he hadn't believed or wanted to believe in. 

Waking to the determination this would _never happen to him again, and no matter how bad his choices or limited his expectations were, he was damned if his world, his __species were going to submit to this future, this abomination. _

From the flood debris a solid rock rose. One he would cling to for purpose and strength when the waters of loss and suffering swelled, and drowning became a sweet temptation. One he would shield behind when he conserved the people he hated and expended the people he loved. 

It didn't really have a name, not patriotism or ruthlessness or xenophobia or pride, being a mixture of those traits. If he had had to identify it, he would have called it hatred, though that was a one-dimensional interpretation. All he knew was it sustained him. 

Through amputation, deaths, resurrections, births, vaccines, miracles, enquiries, cover-ups and clean-ups. 

So now here he was, standing at the portal of his fourth turning point. Undecided. 

* * *

Four turning points. Four corners to a square. Did that now mean he was facing in the same direction he'd started in, all those years ago? If so, he couldn't draw any parallels, couldn't recognise in himself that young, blind, arrogant boy anymore. The one so convinced he was going to be somebody, be a power to be reckoned with, make things happen, do things in the world. Well, he'd certainly achieved the latter, though not quite how he'd expected. For the rest of it? Gone and vanished, his ideals and ambitions childish and immature in retrospect. 

He was adrift now. With no more objectives, he found himself confused. His ambitions were uncertain, in flux. He'd walked to the end of his world, and there was nothing but a fog bank ahead of him. 

They had won, prevented the future he so feared. Amazingly he had survived, even earned acclaim as a partisan for the human race, though stained with a dark reputation, thanked with hesitant words for dubious methods. He wasn't a hero. He knew that. In the end, his motivations had always revolved around himself - resentment and survival and stone-cold hatred. But let the authorities and establishment think his methods were pure, their gratitude meant they had no interest in looking closely at his past or his future. 

That little Great-Aunt-Nina voice in his head counseled him to go curl up somewhere and hide, scream, cry and have that long overdue nervous breakdown he'd been heading towards for the last eight years. That didn't sound too crazy to him. It blocked out the other little voice that said the taste of steel in his mouth and the squeeze of a trigger would bring him silence and peace and the only friendly darkness he would ever know. And he was tired, tired, tired, but damned if he'd succumb to that option. He'd never been a quitter, and it would make the few who were left of his enemies too happy. 

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. That's all it was, and god alone knew he'd had enough stress and trauma in his life. But damn it, he'd dealt fine with this shit for years and he would continue to do so. No matter what Mulder with his half-forgiving, half-sneering tones advised. So he was fucked in the head - who wouldn't be? And Mulder wasn't exactly one to talk, no matter how much of a Scully 'n kids, station wagon, white-picket-fencer he was nowadays. 

He'd been on his way to the airport, booked on a flight to Seattle, then San Diego, then some private flights that would end in a quiet little town on the Florida coast where he hoped to achieve some measure of privacy and forgetfulness. 

But somehow it had seemed necessary to take the long way 'round. A detour that just happened to go past Walter Skinner's door. Funny that.

Poor impulse control had always been his downfall. 

OK, Skinner wasn't exactly going to gun him down in his lounge, though probably more from a regard for his neighbours and the difficulties of getting bloodstains out of carpets than any amelioration of his low opinion of Alex. And that was assuming he even got past the doorstep. 

He realised he'd been staring at the door for at least quarter of an hour. Remarkable none of the neighbours had called the cops yet. 

He should go. The plane was waiting. He couldn't really stand here thinking for the rest of the morning. Thinking about everything but the reason, the _person who was the reason, he was here. Damn, but this kind of thing was best done in the early hours of the morning, with an ice-cold bottle of vodka to hand. _

Fuck it. What the hell. 

He pushed the doorbell.

* * *


	2. Axis Walter's POV

**axis**

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**axis **n. a straight line about which a body or a geometric figure rotates or may be supposed to rotate.

..

I was up at 5 a.m. for a long-distance call with an agent working in Sydney, Australia. There wasn't much point in going back to bed, so I made myself a leisurely breakfast and read the morning paper. The engine of the SUV disturbed the quiet of weekend suburbia and when it stopped, I wandered to the kitchen window to investigate. Years in the FBI make you an inveterate curtain-twitcher.

Oddly enough, I wasn't surprised to see him. 

Not that I considered it inevitable Alex Krycek would end up on my doorstep, but certainly I wasn't shocked. I watched through the nets as he got out of the car, opened the gate and strode up the path. You can't see the front door from the kitchen, so I stood there waiting for the bell to ring, mind idling in circles of not thinking. 

Waited. 

And waited.

A couple of silent minutes passed but he hadn't gone back to the truck. I very much doubted he was setting up a bomb on my porch. Which meant he was still standing outside my front door.

So.

He'd finally picked up his courage to have _that _talk?

I've never expected him to apologise. 

He might, but I've never expected him to. 

One of the things I've come to understand about Alex Krycek is that once something's done, it's done. Regret and guilt are too fleeting to do more than cause a flicker on his emotional radar. He's learnt to accept things with a 'shit happens' nonchalance, and unless retaliation is necessary, to move on to more important matters (an attitude Mulder in particular should be thankful for). It means however, he lacks a certain comprehension that the majority of people aren't like that. Dana, for instance, can hold a grudge until Judgement Day, and I have no doubt over certain matters she will.

But I'm not saying he isn't capable of malice - the man has a malicious streak as wide as a cat's - or hatred.

Krycek hates well.

He hates with an ice-cold passion that is frightening in its intensity and focus. I have had that hatred directed at me, and few human things have ever chilled me more.

The other side of the coin is that he loves with an equal obsession and force. And no matter how much he has loathed me at times, he has always loved me more. 

I remember the look on his face the first time we were introduced. I found myself gripping his hand tighter and longer than was truly professional, watching startled eyes dilate and a soft cupid's bow part on a gasp, imagining him on his knees. 

I take pride in my impassiveness, but he must have seen something on my face for he blushed red and stammered. Mulder probably teased him mercilessly about that response, without any true comprehension of the real emotions underlying it. For such a smart man he is often blind to the true motives of those around him. But then with Krycek, we all were.

I also would have had to have been blind not to realise he was head over heels in love with me. A state he never seems to have recovered from, and a state I must admit to having taken advantage of. Some temptations are just too strong to resist. 

Eve got the apple, I got the green-eyed snake.

But I was never in love with the boy, appealing as he was, and I don't think I ever would have been. He was too arrogant, too brash, too damn eager for approval and power and all the things that youth desire. In so many dangerous ways I didn't know the boy at all, and yet I knew him too well. He was a compulsion, a taste and delight I couldn't get enough of, but I didn't love him.

The man - well, that's another matter.

..

Forgiveness. Mmm, now there's a sticky subject. Where does it come from? How can it even be contemplated? And for what is it actually needed?

Dana would say forgiveness must be earned, but it is also her Christian duty to forgive. 

Yet of the pair of them, Mulder - never the most emotionally stable person in regards to Krycek - seems to have found it easier to grant absolution, despite his wife's religious convictions.

I forgave him one cold dark night in a FBI carpark. All well and good to pardon someone when you think they're dead, perhaps, but I've never felt inclined to withdraw the decision and ultimately, that's all that counts.

And is it actually needed? In the long run, Krycek is a major reason for the human race being free and on the whole, blissfully ignorant of its previously intended doom. Despite his arrogant smirking facade and what he himself might think, there has always been a strong kernel of integrity hidden deep within the self-centeredness and warped morality. A sense of responsibility to his species that even one of Earth's ultimate survivors couldn't repudiate. 

He did what was necessary to preserve humanity. As part of the collateral damage I can't applaud him, but as part of the humanity he preserved, I can't condemn him either.

..

And now the savior of Earth is standing on my doorstep, trying to find the courage to knock. It holds a certain twisted appeal, like so much of Alex's own dark humor. I find myself smiling, take a sip of my coffee. Realise it's unpleasantly lukewarm now.

The doorbell rings, and I go to finally let him in.

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* * *


End file.
